


Naming the Stars

by meanwhiletimely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Family (Harry Potter), Blackcest, Character Study, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:05:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7968844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanwhiletimely/pseuds/meanwhiletimely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He followed her gaze to the night sky beyond the forest clearing, to their star-selves sparkling above them. The Warrior Star. The Dog Star. They’d always shone together, and now they’d burn together, too.</i>
</p><p>The House of Black's notorious renegade Heir crosses paths with the Dark Lord's first lieutenant on a mission for the Order of the Phoenix. Things do not go as planned—but then, for Sirius and Bellatrix, they rarely do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Naming the Stars

_This present tragedy will eventually turn into myth,_  
_the rearrangement of hearts, just parts of old lives patched together,  
_ _gathered into a dim constellation, small consolation._

 _Look, we will say, you can almost see the outline there:_  
_her fingertips touching his, the faint fusion  
_ _of two bodies breaking into light._

— "Naming the Stars" by Joyce Sutphen

* * *

Every hair on the back of Sirius’s neck was standing at attention, and a low magical current—long dormant, long buried—was thrumming and throbbing back to life beneath his skin. The energy churning and coiling around him was not the tightly controlled wandwork of his Hogwarts lessons, but something wilder, something chaotic and primal and _dangerous_. Traces of spells still lingered, and not the kind of spells he’d learned in class.

The cool nighttime air was thick with the familiar scent of blood and gold and ornate ceremonial robes: it smelled like old magic, Dark magic, Black magic.

It smelled like home.

“Alright, Black?” Moody was watching him closely, sharp Auror eyes keen and discerning. The others were staring, too—Gideon and Fabian and Lily and _James_ , James was there, James was reaching out to place a warm, steadying hand on his shoulder, and Sirius could breathe again, letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

Looking down, he saw his fingers gripping the wood of his wand so tightly he feared it might snap. He loosened his grip with effort and met Moody’s piercing stare. “They were here,” he said shortly. “A lot of them—all of them, maybe.”

Moody eyed him warily. “You’re sure?”

Sirius gave a sharp nod. “An hour ago at most.”

The Prewett brothers exchanged looks. “There’s nothing here,” said Fabian, glancing around skeptically at the empty grounds of the Mulciber estate—at the still and silent gardens, at the darkened manor in the distance. “No wards, no cloaking defenses, no Mark, no bodies. How can you be—”

“I’m sure,” snapped Sirius. He felt James’ hand tighten on his shoulder but twisted away, the dog inside him pacing, agitated. Padfoot wouldn’t give a damn about old manors soaked through with Dark magic. Padfoot wouldn’t feel a thing. _If I could shift—_

“You forget who we’re dealing with, Prewett,” Moody was saying. “The Heir to the House of Black doesn’t need _wards_ to sense Dark magic.” His rough voice lowered—sharpened—as he looked back at Sirius with narrowed eyes. “It doesn’t get any Darker than Black.”

Sirius felt himself tense, fingers clenching again around his wand, but James was already stepping forward, indignant. “Sirius has risked his life for this Order more times than most, so if you’re _actually_ implying—” 

“We can’t just raid the estate of a powerful Pureblood family on the word of the Black family’s white sheep,” interrupted Gideon, ignoring James’ glare. “Even if the Mulcibers _do_ have Death Eater ties—”

“Dumbledore says they do,” Lily broke in fiercely, “and _Dumbledore_ trusts Sirius.”

“Be that as it may, this is still a reconnaissance mission, not a raid,” hissed Fabian, rounding on Sirius himself now. “If you’ve truly led us to the doorstep of the Death Eaters’ acting headquarters, we’ll need more than one Auror with us when we infiltrate.” With a glance at Moody, glowering, he added, “ _Even_ if that Auror is you, Alastor.”

“I’m going in before they get back,” Sirius said flatly, sheathing his wand and preparing to shift into the dog. “The rest of you can keep watch, if you want—but I’m getting in there, and I’m getting whatever evidence and intelligence I can find, and—”

The sky split open.

A reverberating shock of magical energy sent Sirius stumbling backward, ears ringing with the deafening _crack_ of a dozen simultaneous Apparitions: robed, masked figures had appeared out of the darkness like living shadows. _Death Eaters_. They were, quite suddenly, surrounded.

“To me!” Sirius heard Moody shout over the resulting eruption of spell-fire. “This was a trap!” James was shouting something, too, back-to-back with Lily, but Sirius couldn’t hear it—couldn’t hear a thing, anymore, except the blood pounding in his ears and through his heart. Spell light flashed across his vision, hot and blinding, illuminating three Death Eaters advancing quickly toward him. He reached once more for his wand.

The curses that exploded out of him with dizzying, dazzling potency were nothing he had been taught in Defense Against the Dark Arts, or in any of Moody’s training sessions: they were the product of private tutoring at Grimmauld Place, ingrained and made indelible by childhood dueling lessons. They sizzled and crackled with relentless, ruthless savagery—fighting Dark fire with fire. The three Death Eaters attacking him fell back on the defensive, caught off-guard. _Father,_ came the fleeting, bitter thought, _would be_ so _proud._

“Someone isn’t fighting like a Gryffindor.” 

The taunt came from behind, in a faceless, eerily cloaked voice that Sirius knew all too well, by now, as the voice of each and every Death Eater behind the mask. Before he could turn, a Stinging Hex in the back sent him sprawling to the ground and dropping his wand.

A quick, desperate once-over showed the rest of them were wholly preoccupied—James and Lily were at Moody’s side, holding off four Death Eaters between them, and the Prewetts were battling five others. Gideon was limping, and blood was gushing madly from one of Moody’s eyes, but as the Death Eater who’d hit from behind stepped forward, four expressionless masks loomed over him, and Sirius could see nothing but the merciless glint of moonlight on silver as they raised their wands. He scrambled for his own, inches from him on the grass, but—

“Leave him,” he heard another Death Eater—the leader, judging by how the others obeyed without question—call out in the same cloaked voice. “You know Black is mine.”

The Death Eater pushing through to bend down at his side was slighter than the others, smaller and slimmer beneath those same austere black robes. The others nodded and stepped back—hurrying to rejoin the other duelists—as their leader touched a bloody, black-gloved hand to Sirius’s cheek, leaning close to breathe into his ear.

“No one will kill you but me.”

Sirius went cold: that low, venomous timbre was achingly familiar, cloaking spell or no. Drawing a ragged breath, he almost choked—he still recognized the poisonous, intoxicating scent of her as well as he recognized the smoking walnut wand in her gloved right hand.

_Bella._

He had wrenched away from her and was on his feet with a perfect dueling recovery jump in a single, shuddering instant, his own wand back in hand. Bellatrix laughed behind the mask, and no charm could disguise that wild laugh: it resounded through his bones with haunting clarity.

“Black!”

They both turned—of course—to see Fabian rushing toward them, dodging curses from the Death Eaters on his heels. Gideon was leaning against his brother, bleeding and only half-conscious. “Take Gideon and go—” Fabian started to say, but Bellatrix raised her wand in a flare of bright green light, and he fell to the ground, unmoving.

Sirius couldn’t see—couldn’t shout—couldn’t breathe. Bellatrix was already turning, sprinting to the woods on the outskirts of the grounds, and he was leaping after her: snarling, growling, shifting at last onto all fours. James was screaming _“Sirius!”_ as if from very far away, but Sirius wasn’t there anymore, and Padfoot wasn’t listening. All that mattered now was ripping Bella’s viperous Black heart out—all that mattered now was tearing sharp teeth into her throat.

The trees closed up around him as he entered the forest, lush and whispering in darkness. A dim, still-human part of him remembered the old stories of Dark witches waiting in the woods—luring, and alluring. But the dog could think of nothing but tracking and attacking; could smell nothing but her heady scent; could hear nothing but the rustle of black robes ahead; could see nothing but a flash of silver through the trees.

She was ready for him, waiting in a starlit clearing as he leapt inside it, firing some Dark non-verbal curse—a jet of purple light that flew past him as he jumped around it, rebounding off a tree and forcing her duck. Taking advantage of her distraction, he bounded toward her, teeth bared, and pinned her to the ground: clawing at her robes and skin until she bled, until she cried out, until she stabbed a silver knife into his back, and the world exploded in a haze of pain and stars.

When he could see again, he was human, and bleeding, and lying on top of Bellatrix—her robes askew, her hood and mask torn off, her Black-grey eyes searing triumphantly into his own. Horrified—dizzy with the pain sparking knife-like up his spine—Sirius rolled away, retching blood onto the forest floor.

“You’re a shapeshifter,” breathed Bellatrix in her own, un-cloaked voice, sitting up to stare at him. “You’re an _Animagus._ ”

“Brilliant deduction,” Sirius choked out painfully, searching frantic for his wand inside his coat—his boots—his trousers. “All that training in the Dark Arts really does pay off.” His wand was nowhere to be found—he must have dropped it, before shifting in a rage— _he didn’t have his wand._

 _Fuck_ , thought Sirius dully, as Bellatrix’s lips curved upward in a slow, sharp smile.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, “and so am I.” Bellatrix pushed aside her ripped black robes to expose the bloody claw marks streaking red across the pale expanse of skin on her collarbones and shoulders, then further down, _down_ , cutting across the swell of her white breasts—

“Stop,” Sirius said hoarsely, looking away, looking anywhere but at the maddening, murdering harpy in front of him, casting a desperate healing spell under his breath and feeling the obliterating pain at his back not ebb away, but dull.

“But you did this, Sirius.” She spoke his name as if it was an unfamiliar, half-forgotten spell. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her call him anything but _blood-traitor_. He couldn’t remember, at the moment, much of anything at all. “It’s your blood,” she was saying—tracing one of the bleeding lacerations on her chest, then reaching up to touch the red stain to her tongue. _“Black_ blood.”

Sirius laughed shortly at that, struggling to his feet with difficulty. Bellatrix stood as well with lethal languor, still very close—too close. She had replaced the bloody knife, but he was excruciatingly aware of the wand at her side, and his own lack of any sort of weapon. He had never mastered wandless battle magic, but he was willing to bet that Bellatrix—even if he managed to disarm her—was intimately acquainted with the concept. He was in no state to shift back. This was very, _very_ not good.

 _Keep talking, then,_ he thought in desperation. _Distract her._ With any luck, James and the others would follow him, would find him—because James and the others were alive. They had to be. _With any luck,_ he thought again, trying not to think of Fabian, forcing himself to stay standing. Forcing air and words out of his lungs.

“Not Black blood—because you’re not a Black anymore, Bella.” Her mirror-like gaze was narrowed now—at his use of her name, or at the reminder. Maybe both. He had seen the marriage in the papers, of course, had seen her blinking out from the pages of the Prophet in her long-sleeved black wedding gown, Lestrange’s hand encircling her waist. He had set the photograph on fire without thinking why, without thinking at all, had watched _Bellatrix Lestrange_ burn to ashes before tossing the ashes in the rubbish bin and finding a hard, stiff drink. “You’re not a Black, now,” he repeated, savoring the way that blazing look slid wholly off her face, “any more than I am.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, cousin.” Her voice was lower, now—low and barbed and dangerous. She stepped closer with every word, closer and _closer_ until he was backed against a gnarled tree, gasping out in pain as the wound at his back hit the bark. “Running away from the blood in your veins has not made it any less Black.”

Removing the glove on her right hand, Bellatrix reached out to trail a single finger down his neck and jawline—sharp and angular, like hers, like the rest of them, too, _good breeding_ , all those high cheekbones and eyes of serrated steel—circling his pulse point. Sirius recoiled as that familiar thrum of energy surged up inside of him, that same current within both of them amplified with touch.

“Those spells you were using— _Dark_ spells, very Dark. ” She was leaning even closer now, pressing sinuous against him like a serpent, digging her nails into his skin. Breathing hard, Sirius closed his eyes against the intensity of her gaze, against the pain throbbing through his body, against the sensation of her breasts pressing into his chest. “Did it feel good, Sirius? To stop _pretending_ , for a moment, to be anything but what you are, what you were _born_ to be?”

“Shut up,” hissed Sirius, wanting nothing more than for her to stop talking, wanting nothing more than to silence the ringing in his ears and that rush, that _rush_ in his blood. He pictured hitting _her_ with one of those Dark curses, pictured her writhing in agony, pictured her writhing _beneath_ him— _no._

He drew another strangled breath, acutely aware of the rise and fall of her chest against his, of her own rapid breathing, heartbeat to heartbeat. It was its own Dark magic, what she was doing to him, what she had always been able to do to him: effortless, all instinct. Bella’s red, red lips were at his throat, her warm touch burning like acid through his clothes and through his skin, and he was hard, so hard it hurt. He knew she could feel it—he felt, rather than saw, her smirk—and he _hated_ her, had never hated anyone more.

“It could have been you, Sirius.” Her voice was at his ear again, her hands creeping down, _down._ “You could have had me.” He could feel her wedding ring beneath the glove on her left hand as she stroked light fingers over the aching bulge in his trousers. “ _You_ threw that away.”

The Heir to the House and its first-born daughter, joining together two branches of the Family tree. It was the preferred way—his parents’ way. Cousins. Both of them Blacks.

_Toujours Pur._

Burning with adrenaline—with sudden, anguished rage—Sirius twisted away, shoving Bellatrix aside with a burst of wandless magic that sent her flying back against a tree at the opposite side of the clearing. Her lithe body slammed against the trunk so hard he half expected her to shatter, but she _laughed_.

“I am nothing like them—like _you,_ ” he snarled, advancing furiously toward her. “I will fight you and everything you stand for until the day I die.”

He had both his hands wrapped around her throat before she could catch a breath or draw a weapon, pulling her up, _squeezing,_ but—“It’s not me you’re fighting,” she gasped out, struggling for breath, grasping for her wand. “It’s your nature.”

Her Revulsion Jinx hit strong: Sirius was knocked backward to the ground, groaning, tasting dirt.

“Down, dog,” sneered Bellatrix, her usually smooth voice harsh and rasping, massaging her bruised throat with one hand and holding him at wandpoint with the other. Sirius tried and failed to move, incapacitated by fury and the pain shooting up his spine—she considered him, amused. “Should I collar you? Should I put you on a leash?”

Sirius glared up at her, summoning every scrap of scorn and defiance he could muster under the circumstances. “You’d know all about collars and leashes these days, wouldn’t you?” A vaguely flustered expression flitted across her face. That discomfited her, did it? Good. “How’s your _Master_ , Bella?” he continued, contemptuous and mocking. “Has he taught you any new tricks? Can you lie down? Can you _kneel?”_

“Crucio,” whispered Bellatrix, caressing the word with her tongue, and for a single, excruciating moment, all of Sirius’s nerves seem to catch on fire. He bit his own tongue to keep from crying out, swallowing blood, contorting, and then—as suddenly as it started—it stopped.

Bellatrix was bending over him, breathing hard, knuckles white around her wand. Her eyes were wilder than ever, glittering with zealous fervor… and something _else,_ something feral and somehow wanton.

“You have no right to speak of Him.” She spoke the word in hushed, reverential tones, with a capital letter. _Him._ It made his skin crawl. All his muscles were spasming with the aftershocks of that little taste of Cruciatus (she’d released him quicker than his father ever had—how merciful); all his senses had heightened to an almost unbearable level of intensity. He felt he could eat the world raw, and Bellatrix along with it. When she reached out to touch him with a beatific look that could almost be tenderness, he wrenched a bruising grip around her arm and half-pulled, half-threw her to the ground.

Rolling on top of her to restrain her with the full weight of his body, he wrangled for the wand. She was struggling like a manticore, biting and scratching and kicking, firing off curses into the trees with brutal ferocity. He was reminded, ludicrously, of one of their childhood wrestling matches—battling for use of a spare, stolen wand. Then a tug on her already-ripped black robes made them slip down from her shoulders, and Bella as a child was the last thing on his mind.

Her heaving breasts were streaked with blood from where he’d scratched her as the dog, and her nipples were hard and taut in the cold night air. Other wounds and older scars covered the exposed skin of her entire torso, the remnants of Merlin knew what Dark spells—he didn’t know, he didn’t want to know. She had stilled, was no longer struggling, was staring up at him with a challenging, knife-edged smile. He considered seizing the wand, speaking the Killing Curse into her mouth. He considered other uses for her mouth. Then her lips were on his, and he found himself incapable of considering anything else.

She tasted like poison flowers, like _belladonna_ , something sweet and sickly all at once. There was blood in her mouth—hers, or his, or _theirs—_ and her moans sounded just like his own.

Wand forgotten, she’d entwined her gloved hand in his hair and was creeping the other beneath his shirt to rake sharp nails down his back: drawing stripes as bloody as the ones he’d left on her, intentionally grazing the open wound. He violently kneaded her breasts, dug his fingers into the tantalizing swell of her hips, pressed down savagely upon her as if he could break her in half, but she only shuddered in pleasure, snaking her legs around him to pull him closer. He was lost, he was damned, he was on _fire_ , and when she reached once more for his trousers, he knew he was trapped—knew he would never leave these woods.

“The stars are watching, Sirius,” Bellatrix said breathlessly, breaking from that corrosive kiss to tilt her head back, exposing her throat. Her hair was wild, leaf-strewn, coming entirely undone, and her hands were working underneath his trousers with deft, torturous dexterity. Breathing very shallowly—dizzy with desire and blood loss, overcome with shame and loathing—he followed her gaze to the night sky beyond the forest clearing, to their star-selves sparkling above them. The Warrior Star. The Dog Star. They’d always shone together, and now they’d burn together, too. 

Sickened with himself, with her, with seeing that entire bloody tapestry reflected in the sky, Sirius seized what remained of her robes and ripped them open to expose her fully, ignoring the victorious gleam in her eyes; ignoring the sharp gasp that might have come from either of them as he plunged his fingers inside the hot, tight wetness between her legs, readying himself to enter her—ready to face the final precipice before damnation, ready to rip her apart.

When she cried out—piercing, pained—he thought he might have managed to actually hurt her, and froze with the startling force of that idea, that Bellatrix might actually feel pain. But she was already shoving him aside and staggering up, wand in hand: inexplicably clutching her gloved left arm.

Dazed, feeling as though he’d just been Confunded, Sirius staggered to his feet. He watched warily as she hurried to seize the fallen silver mask with one trembling hand, pulling the torn black robes around herself with the other. Seeing the swaths of bloodied skin still left uncovered, she gave a low, short laugh.

“Don’t worry, cousin,” said Bellatrix, glancing back at him in dark amusement—placing a precise amount of emphasis on that final word, exultant at having proved that he, the runaway Heir, was as Black at heart as the rest of them. “The Dark Lord will finish the job.”

Any and all arousal drained out of him so quickly it might never have been there at all, replaced in an instant by revolted, disbelieving horror. One look at her elated, gloating expression confirmed the implication: she was serving her _Master_ in many more ways than one. He wanted to Scourgify his mouth, to scrub his hands clean, to strip his own clothes off and set them on fire. She was beyond damnation. She was mistress to the devil himself.

“It’s still not too late,” she said softly, grey eyes boring into his as if she could see through them, into his mind, “to choose the right side.”

“Oh, it is,” he spat out, backing away, wanting to hurl, wanting to run. “It is _far_ too late for you.”

Bellatrix started to reply, then gave another cry, shutting her eyes tightly against what looked like searing pain. Sirius stared, thoroughly unsettled: she was still gripping her left forearm. “Until next time,” she choked out through gritted teeth, raising her wand. _“Obliviate.”_

There was a _crack_ and a flash of bright light, and then Sirius was alone on the ground in an empty forest clearing, staring up at a starry sky. He was bleeding—every bone and muscle in his body ached and throbbed—and somewhere in the distance, drawing closer, Prongs was calling out his name.

“Sirius!” James shouted, entering the clearing, rushing to him with two wands. There was blood on his face and his hands, and he looked frantic, half-deranged. “Sirius, _what_ the bloody hell!” 

Sirius tried to sit up, then groaned, his entire body crying out in protest, his vision studded with stars. James looked, if possible, even more beside himself. “You need a Healer—you’re bleeding—running into the forest by yourself without a wand, shifting in full view of everyone, thank _Merlin_ no one else saw—what were you _thinking_ , Sirius, were you even thinking at _all_ —”

“The Death Eater—their leader—” Sirius grasped at the disappearing tendrils of his memory, sensing something wasn’t right, sensing something _very_ wrong. His mouth was dry, and tasted sickly sweet. He swallowed. “Got away.”

“Who was it?” James demanded. “Who the hell was it, to leave the rest of us and go chasing after him alone? Even if You-Know-Who himself—”

“I don’t know.” Sirius shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to think past the pain. “I don’t remember.” Wind shuddered through the branches of the trees like laughter—he shivered, feeling very cold. “The others—are they alright? Are they—?”

Sirius cut off in alarm: tears were welling up in James’ eyes. He wiped them angrily away, leaving a streak of dried blood across his cheek. “The Prewetts are dead,” he said flatly, and Sirius felt a chill run through him, green light flashing behind his eyes. “Moody’s injured,” James continued, drawing a deep, shaking breath. “Lily took him to St. Mungo’s, but I couldn’t leave, I had to find you—”

Ignoring the pained objections screaming out from every nerve and pore, Sirius forced himself up and wrenched James to him in a tight embrace. James melted into his arms at once, hugging him back with a fierceness that precluded words. This was what he was fighting for, this was what he’d _keep_ fighting for, this was—

 _Family_ , thought Sirius, feeling faint, feeling himself rapidly lose consciousness as James’ elbow dug into a sore spot on his back. He looked up at the fading sky as the world went black, trying to remember the names of the stars.


End file.
